


And I'm So Sorry

by orphan_account



Category: Fall Out Boy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-23 15:26:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17686091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: am i projecting? not at all.





	And I'm So Sorry

**Author's Note:**

> am i projecting? not at all.

It wasn’t even a cold and rainy day where the sky was hidden behind a thick blanket of dull clouds, the sort of day that made you take one glance out of the widow in the morning and want to quit on life (for most people, the immediate reaction was probably wanting to quit on the day, but Pete Wentz, notorious drama Queen, was writing his own script to his own play). In fact, it was pleasantly warm considering the time of year, the sun was out and the streets actually had people on them, which had become an unfamiliar sight throughout the last few months. 

 

Still, even with the comfort of happy people and warming sunbeams, the dread in Pete’s gut ate away at him like a cancer. It had been there for a while now, settling, growing, so much so that he’d wound up at the doctor’s more than once. “It’s nothing,” she’d said, “maybe talk about your therapist about increasing the dose”. The thing was, no amount of Benzos could calm his anxiety when he wasn’t catching a second’s worth of sleep at night. 

 

Pete thought about being late, deliberately late, like, 15 minutes late, just to draw out the inevitable, just so he didn’t have to risk sitting in a lonely café waiting for the other party to be late but could distract himself by watching nothing, no-one rather than staring at a shitty, cheap IKEA painting.

 

The truth was, he’d been late too many times. If this was his last chance at breaking a continuous streak of bad habits, he wanted to make it count.

 

Chai Latte, extra cinnamon, and chocolate muffin in hand, he slumped off to the back room of the lille not-chain café, a wonder in and of itself really, having more choice than the Starbucks opposite or the one ten minutes down the road. This place had sofas. Not benches with uncomfortable upholstery, actual old, charismatic, battered sofas. He loved them, even now, after all this time he had spent away from them. It was odd, the entire city seemed strange, just out of focus, but barely. Time, he supposed, did that to you. Would he still fit in his old body? With the rat of guilt gnawing away at the back of his mind, he wouldn’t be surprised if the emo fringe felt like home.

 

There was a tiny, teeny little part of him still hoping it would remain like this, him staring holes into empty space until he got bored and enough time had passed for him to justifiably leave. Everything but closure, really, but Pete suspected an open ending would be better than a bad one. A lot could change in two and a half years. He wasn’t the man he had been. 

 

Neither was Patrick.

 

That much confirmed itself when the shift of the heavy curtain shielding the back room from the draft shifted, allowing for a figure Pete was unfamiliar with, yet knew like the back of his hand, to come waddling through. He wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry at the sight of him. Patrick. Former bandmate. Former best friend. Former…

 

Former. 

 

The torture of small talk with someone you used to love. That line was still sitting in one of Pete’s notebooks. He’d hoped it might find its way into a song someday. He suspected it never would now.

 

“Hey.” That was all. Hey. Two years and uncountable loaded arguments later. Hey. Pete’s gut clenched in potest when he didn’t even reach out a hand to shake.

 

“Hi.” Patrick was carrying an Americana. Pete had always hated black coffee, had always pulled his nose up at it when Patrick would carry it around with him, the dark brown of it almost comically contrasting the bright colours of Pete’s sugary concoctions. Now, it was comforting. The only constant in this unfamiliar familiarity. 

 

“Sorry I’m late,” he said as he pulled a gray scarf from around his neck. He wasn’t. Pete waved it off like he hadn’t been sitting there for the last ten minutes. 

 

“It’s literally… two minutes past, I think I’ll live.” Patrick smiled politely, that damned white people smirk, and sipped his bitter coffee. Pete felt ridiculous. 

 

“To be honest I kinda figured you’d be late so…” the sentence was finished off with a casual chuckle and Pete joined in like the accusation, the reminder didn’t tear him open like he was having a Cesarean. 

 

“Nope, been working on that.”

 

“Good, it was one of your worse habits, I’m not gonna lie.” He was only joking. Pete could tell he was only joking, he knew Patrick’s malicious tone and this wasn’t it. Though between the skinny torso, cutting cheekbones and chicken-yellow hair, Pete wasn’t sure how much of his experience he could trust. He hadn’t downloaded the latest patch on his Patrick reader. It scared him. 

 

“I had… a lot of those” he said, carefully. He wasn’t going to brush off or hide his mistakes, act like he never made them. He just wasn’t sure if he wanted to offer himself up as a target just yet.

 

“Most of them were forgivable.” 

 

A couple came into the room, they sat down at a round table, a piece of cake each and a pot of tea to share. Pete suddenly felt like he was in an interview. He lowered his voice and leaned a little closer.

 

“I uh… I read your blog post.” No reaction. “I’m sorry man, it… sucks a lot. People are assholes.” Patrick,  _ his _ Patrick, would have laughed bitterly and nodded, agreeing with him before he broke into a rant about art music and how the world didn’t appreciate it and Pete would listen, his head propped on his palm like a teenage girl with her first crush, ans soak in every word of it.

 

Patrick,  _ this  _ Patrick, shrugged.

 

“I get where they’re coming from, I… it could have been better, I guess, but… dunno. It’s just not nice to hear.” Pete knew. By god, he knew, years of being the most love and hated guy in the nation, how long had he shielded Patrick form all of this? Terrified he’d be hurt by the shrapnell. He’d thought it was the right thing to do.

 

Looking back, his shielding was just the little sister of possessiveness.

 

“They’re wrong,” he jumped in quickly, “it’s a good album, you were trying something different. You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.” Part of him, the very Pete part, wanted Patrick to stare at him all wide-eyes and wonder and swoon because the great Pete Wentz had just told him he was a good musician.

 

This wasn’t 2001.

 

Patrick wasn’t that. 

 

“I dunno, I guess I’m just… trying to find a point to it all, yanno? Hopefully soon.” He stirred the spoon in his cup despite there not being anything in it but coffee. Pete slurped his ridiculously sugary drink.

 

He knew he had to, knew he couldn’t put it off forever. The air between them was thick and heavy, loaded with pre-thunderstorm static, a feeling Pete had become all too familiar with three years ago, had not been able to forget since. 

 

It wouldn’t blow over by itself, they never did. 

 

He took a deep breath, looking everywhere but the little blonde guy in front of him. 

 

Now or never.

 

“I’m sorry.” It was so simple, so easy to say. Two little words, not at all difficult to pronounce, probably used hundreds of times a day casually, when bumping into strangers, when trying to get somebody’s attention. Nothing. Almost meaningless.

 

Why had it taken him two and a half years to say it? And why were those words so heavy on his tongue?   
  
Patrick was looking at him with raised eyebrows. There was expectation, maybe confusion in his look, but he didn’t say anything. Not a word. He didn’t have to. What had he done wrong? No, it was Pete’s turn to talk. 

 

“I’m sorry I… said and did some shit, I… wish I could take back but I can’t.” memories of words he should never have spoken clung to him like parasites, memories he might never be rid of. Regret was a bitch.

 

“I was… upset. It’s not an excuse, really, but I kinda just… shut down I guess? I dunno, I shut down and got defensive. I shouldn’t have… I’m sorry.”

 

He wasn’t sure if the static was crackling or dissipating. 

 

“It’s okay,” Patrick said, the artificial politeness in his voice gone to reveal… something Pete knew so well but couldn’t grasp. “I mean, I get it I was… I wasn’t the best, I guess.” He laughed bitterly and it cut even further into Pete.

 

“No, you didn’t… do anything wrong, man that’s kinda the problem, I… I was just, I took it, like… really badly, I dunno. I- it wasn’t fair. On either of us, I guess.” It felt good to say. Every word was another slice in his skin but he needed to shed himself. He just hoped Patrick would let him. And if this was the last time they saw each other, well… He could do with a new skin either way.

 

“I mean, I guess… you were kinda cold. Like, I was trying my best, y’know?” He was hesitant, scratching at the back of his neck like he always did when he was nervous and Pete was tearing himself in half, between recognising and not knowing.

 

“I know, fuck, I know you were and I just… I thought you breaking up the band meant… I thought it meant you hated me, I just… I thought I’d done something wrong and I kinda didn’t know how to deal with? And Like I… I know now, all that shit you did after, those bits of songs you sent and… the phonecalls, they were… I thought you were just mocking me and I was so fucking dumb because I know you were, like, I dunno, showing me you hadn’t given up on me or whatever but I just, I wanted you so bad still and I thought… I thought you were trying to hurt me so I… I…”

 

“You hurt me back?” Finally, their eyes met. Pete lost his footing, falling and drowning in ocean blue he’d missed  _ so much _ he couldn’t fit his mouth around the correct words. They were so distant. So not his.

 

“I didn’t even notice I was doing it until it… it was too late, really, and you didn’t wanna like… talk to me, which, yanno, I… get, I can’t even blame you for it and I think that, that kinda hurts most because, well… it’s my fault. And I was so, so  _ fucking _ stupid to push you away because I had… we had something good. I feel like, anyway, I dunno.” He couldn’t read him. That was the worst, really. Patrick Stump had always been an open book to him, so easy to understand, he never had to double, guess any of it, but now… now he couldn’t read a damn line of him, not one. He was a different person now. A different person in a different city with different friends and a different life. Pete could probably be considered idiotic for even being here.   


 

“So, like… I… miss you. And I know we… can’t just go back or, like… whatever, but…” he tried to find anything in patrick’s expression, willed the words out of him, the ones that told him the other side of the story, told him how shit he’d been, how hopeless and futile this attempt at an apology was. 

 

There was nothing left to say. Not anymore. 

 

“If this is, like… the last time we see each other” just saying it broke his heart, “I just, I wanted you to know I’m seriously, genuinely so sorry I’ve been… nothing but cruel. And you don’t deserve that. I kinda just… I wanted to make sure you were okay because you… your post it worried me. And I care, I still do. But I just, I want you to know I’m here for you if you… if you need anybody, I’m always here and I promise I’ll be better. But, like…”  _ deep breath, Pete _ , “if you don’t want to… me to be there, like, I can… I get that. And I won’t… be mad or push you or anything. I just… I wanna put this behind me because no matter how I live with it it’s just this… thing gnawing away at me. I’m sorry.”

 

When he looked back up, Patrick’s face was almost as he knew it. There was a kindness to his features, the one that was there even when he was mad. He’d have his outbreaks, he always had them, his dumbass phases but, at the bottom of all of it, Patrick Stump was the kindest person he had ever known. Maybe he would ever know.

 

And he’d been dumb enough to throw that away. 

 

Patrick didn’t have to say it. The weight lifted off Pete’s shoulders with the mere look in his eyes.

 

“I was…” he started, carefully, “I was thinking, if… if you’re not totally done with me or whatever, well… I’m kinda looking for a point to it all, yanno and… maybe, just maybe, if the others were okay with it, well, I know we couldn’t go back, not to what we were we were… different people then and kinda… shit at being friends but… but maybe we could take the good bits and… and make them better.

 

“What do you say?”

 


End file.
